Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
The preliminary amendment filed 10/1/24 has been entered.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDS statements filed to date have been considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7-11, and 13-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lei et al., US 2023/0132437, (“Lei”), in view of Wallen et al., US 2021/0194660, (“Wallen”).
Independent Claims
Regarding claim 1, Lei teaches “A method by a first device, the method comprising:
performing a channel access procedure for a first channel, based on a first sensing duration, before a sidelink (SL) transmission (Fig. 3, step 313; paragraph nos. 0030, 0036, 0092 and in particular, 0092, “When CAPC #2 is smaller than or equal to CAPC #1, UE2 may, in operation 313 (denoted by dotted block as an option), perform a channel access procedure (e.g., a Type-2 channel access procedure)”); and
performing the SL transmission, based on the first channel being idle (Fig. 3, step 315; paragraph no. 0092, “When the channel access procedure is successful, UE2 may, in operation 315 (denoted by dotted block as an option), transmit the sidelink data in the shared resource within the COT”; see also, paragraph no. 0036),
wherein (i) based on the channel access procedure including a type 1 channel access procedure, (ii) based on the SL transmission including a physical sidelink feedback channel (PSFCH) transmission, and (iii) based on the first sensing duration being a sensing duration related to a first channel access priority class (CAPC) value for the SL transmission, the first sensing duration is pre-configured” (paragraph nos. 0030, 0051, 0094; the “first sensing duration is pre-configured” appears implicit in Lei since Lei discloses that the energy detection needs to be performed in a range from several sensing slots to hundreds of sensing slots, see paragraph no. 0030 – the number of slots appears to be specified in 3GPP TS 37.213 as disclosed in that paragraph; however, see below for an explicit teaching of this limitation).
Wallen explicitly teaches that a “first sensing duration is pre-configured,” see paragraph no. 0004 which discloses that LBT involves sensing the medium for a pre-defined minimum amount of time and backing off if the channel is busy. Pre-defined and pre-configured are equivalent terms.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Lei by incorporating the teachings of Wallen to enable the UE to perform the channel access procedure without receiving any signaling from the network regarding certain LBT parameters such as the sensing duration. This allows the UE to quickly perform the LBT based on its pre-configured parameters such as the sensing duration and reduces the signaling overhead between the UE and the network.
Regarding independent claims 14 and 15, these independent claims are corresponding apparatus claims of the method claim 1 and recite similar subject matter. As such, the rationale behind the above rejection of claim 1 applies with equal force to these independent claims and as further amplified below to highlight the minor differences between the claims.
Regarding independent claims 14 and 15, see Lei, Fig. 8 and paragraph no. 0099 for the claimed structural elements of each claim.
Dependent Claims
Regarding claims 2 and 16, Lei teaches “wherein (i) based on the channel access procedure including the type 1 channel access procedure, (ii) based on the SL transmission including the PSFCH transmission, and (iii) the smaller the first CAPC value for the SL transmission” (paragraph nos. 0030, 0051, paragraph no. 0043, Table 1; Table 1 shows that the smaller the CAPC value, the shorter the CW size which is related to a size of the sensing duration).
Lei does not explicitly teach “the shorter the first sensing duration is configured” of claims 2 and 16. However, Lei does teach that the size of the CW is shorter in relation to a smaller CAPC value, as shown in Table1. Based on this disclosure, the limitation “the shorter the first sensing duration is configured” is an obvious modification. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Lei and Wallen by having a smaller sensing duration as the CAPC value is smaller to enable the UE to quickly sense the channel for higher priority traffic data, thereby reducing latency for the transmission of the higher priority traffic data.
Regarding claims 3, 17, Lei teaches “wherein the first channel access priority class (CAPC) value is configured to 1” (see Table 1, paragraph no. 0043).
Regarding claims 4, 18, Lei teaches “wherein the first sensing duration is smaller than or equal to a second sensing duration for a second channel related to data” (paragraph no. 0092 discloses PSSCH (“second channel”) and the sensing duration for PSSCH is the same as the sensing duration for the PSFCH).
Regarding claim 5, Lei teaches “wherein the second sensing duration includes a sensing duration related to a second CAPC value related to data transmission” (see Table 1, paragraph no. 0043 for a “second CAPC value” (CAPC value 2)).
Regarding claim 7, Lei teaches “wherein the first CAPC value for the first channel is smaller than or equal to a second CAPC value for a second channel related to data transmission” (Table 1, paragraph no. 0043, discloses CAPC values 1 and 2).
Regarding claim 8, Lei teaches “wherein the SL transmission includes transmission of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback information” (paragraph nos. 0051, 0055).
Regarding claim 9, Lei teaches “wherein the SL transmission includes transmission of a transport block (TB), and wherein (i) based on the channel access procedure including the type 1 channel access procedure, (ii) based on the SL transmission including data transmission, and (iii) based on the first sensing duration related to the first CAPC value for the SL transmission, the first sensing duration is configured with a sensing duration mapped to data whose lowest CAPC priority is used among one or more data multiplexed in the TB” (paragraph nos. 0030, 0043 and Table which shows CAPC value 1).
Regarding claim 10, Lei teaches “wherein a channel access procedure based on the first sensing duration, a random back- off counter, and a contention window is included in the type 1 channel access procedure” (paragraph no. 0030).
Regarding claims 11, 19, Lei teaches “wherein, based on the first channel not being idle, the SL transmission is skipped” (paragraph no. 0029).
Regarding claim 13, Lei teaches “wherein the SL transmission is performed in the first channel and a channel occupancy time (COT), and wherein the SL transmission includes transmission for information related to a type of a channel access procedure related to the COT” (paragraph no. 0044).
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lei and Wallen as applied to claim 5 above, and further in view of Hofmann et al., US 2022/0369088, (“Hofmann”).
Lei does not teach but Hofmann teaches “wherein the data includes first data transmitted via a first data radio bearer (DRB), and wherein the first DRB is mapped to a quality of service (QoS) flow” (paragraph no. 0067).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Lei and Wallen by incorporating the teachings of Hofmann to facilitate the transmission of sidelink data from one UE to another UE.
Claim(s) 12, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lei and Wallen as applied to claims 1, 15 above, and further in view of Oh et al., US 2022/0060999, (“Oh”).
Lei teaches “detecting a failure of the channel access procedure, based on the first channel being occupied and based on the SL transmission being skipped” (paragraph nos. 0005, 0029) but not “wherein the failure of the channel access procedure is detected per resource block (RB) set.”
Oh teaches “wherein the failure of the channel access procedure is detected per resource block (RB) set” (paragraph no. 0129, last 6 lines)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Lei and Wallen by incorporating the teachings of Oh to facilitate the transmission of sidelink data from one UE to another UE per BWP, as suggested by Oh in paragraph no. 0129.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WON TAE C. KIM whose telephone number is (571)270-1812. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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/WON TAE C KIM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2414
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